


There is a Kingdom (The Daughters of Eve Know No Forgiveness)

by Glinda



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Community: lgbtfest, F/F, Post-Canon, The Problem of Susan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-17
Updated: 2009-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-04 12:10:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/pseuds/Glinda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wartime London may have made her jaded, but New York has opened Susan's eyes and Narnia feels like a dream. Perhaps if she can convince the others that it was then Peter will seem less like a stranger, and Lucy won't have to cry herself to sleep at night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this originally for the prompt: _There were many more reasons that Susan had given up on Narnia than met the eye._ at lgbtfest but it grew epically, so I cut it in two and handily the first half worked quite well as a stand alone story. I eventually finished it about 7 months later, for simplicity I've left it broken in two a put it into separate chapters. For the purposes of this story I'm somewhat ignoring the official time line, I'd always thought Lucy was 10 in the first story so *waves hands helplessly* lets pretend she was and that Edmund was 11 and then its fine.

_I don't believe in an interventionist God  
But I know, darling, that you do  
But if I did I would kneel down and ask Him  
Not to intervene when it came to you_

In the summer of 1942 Susan Pevensie does not get sent away to stay with her aunt in the country when their parents go abroad. Peter is chaffing in a junior civil service job, while she putters back and forth across London on the railways. There are hours of tedium in both their jobs, but the occasional rides she convinces the engine drivers to give her up front are worth hours with a fake smile selling tickets. Peter longs for a battle he is once again too young for, and she hopes desperately that it ends before he is old enough to discover how little honour there is in this particular war. With their parents away they fall into a strange sort of domesticity, disastrous culinary adventures, overly formal speech and spending too much of their meagre wages on trips to the cinema and theatre. The theatre trips are rarer, more expensive, but it is there for the first time that Susan falls in love. Walking home arm in arm, parasol over her shoulder she tells her brother all about her plans to become an actress after the war. He talks of becoming a pilot, a small chance of something approaching honour in this war, with an added bonus of having a trade afterwards. She laughs along with him and tries not to think of newsreel pictures of Paris in flames.

They manage a long weekend in the country; her railway pass taking them all the way to the tiny station that serves the town their aunt lives in. Their aunt remains just as unbearably fussy as ever, but Eustace seems less brattish and unbearable than memory and Lucy and Edmund's letters would suggest. The five of them escape out to the fields and the truth is revealed; the others have managed another escape into Narnia. And for a while both she and Peter are too busy demanding news on their old friends, on the daring adventures and bravery of Caspian and Reepicheep, to be jealous of them. She stares long and hard at the painting of The _Dawntreader_, wishing desperately that she could believe it a dream, so that her heart would not ache for where it could not return.

The day they are due to leave, she finds herself out walking with Lucy alone. It's a shock to discover a devious streak to her little sister, as she divines from her little sisters' leading questions that she's engineered this little tête-à-tête herself. Lucy talks in circles, touching on then shying away from her final conversation with Aslan. She thinks on her own conversation with the great lion, of the cryptic words that make more sense now than the day she heard them but still reveal so little. Lucy seems even more baffled by hers that Susan was, but later when Susan catches Edmund watching their younger sister with a worried frown and fierce protectiveness in his eyes, she understands all to well and thinks that he does too. She keeps Lucy's innocence as a small precious thing, clings to the hope that one of them might get through this war intact.

~

By the time the war has ended, Susan's plans are far less vague. She applies to RADA and takes a good three weeks to tell her parents that she's been successful. They don't exactly approve but after three years of war work, and watching Lucy study for exams Susan never had the opportunity to sit, she reckons she's owed something for herself. Her amateur dramatics have sometimes been all that kept her going and she is certain of something for the first time in her life.

It's a whole different world at school, more disciplined in some ways, freer in others. She's learning things about human nature that she never even imagined existed. Moving out of her parents' house and in with several female classmates changes things substantially. There is lipstick and silk stockings and parties galore, even if they do have to be saved for scrupulously with hoarded coupons. There are handsome beaus to make love to – and to make love with, about which she is less scandalised that she suspects she should be. There are girls who've never grown out of their boarding school girlfriends, yet look nothing like her old school hockey mistress. Long hours freezing in rehearsals, building sets and helping the lead roles with their costumes and make up. She can't even begin to explain how much she loves her new world, or find words to answer Peter's baffled queries about the occasional men in dresses and girls in suits and top hats that drift through the party her flatmates hold, while he lurks in the kitchen failing to avoid the propositions of either.

~

She's a terrible correspondent but she adores the letters her younger siblings write her. Lucy away at another school, all Professor Kirke's tutoring having evidently paid off, writes joyful epistles full of her own small adventures, treasured friendships and academic achievements. Edmund write less often but she tries to answer more of his, he tends to only write when he needs advice or guidance, at least of the kind he cannot ask Lucy about. Peter never writes, he never did become a pilot; instead he's steadily working his way up in the Ministry of Defence. He wears the Official Secrets Act like a crown and the three of him let him away with it, pretending not to see the shadows in his eyes cast by the things he knows. She sits for long hours reading over Edmund's latest letter, thinking of the things it doesn't say and the unspoken request ringing in her ears. 'Come home I need your help.' She does, because she understands what it has cost her younger brother to ask, dreading to think what this admission means.

At first everything seems fine, Lucy home and their parents away an unexpected bonus. It's not until night falls that she begins to get an inkling of what is wrong. Something rouses her from sleep, and she lies awake in the dark for long minutes trying to place what it was. Slipping out onto the landing she's at Lucy's door before she realises what she's doing. She checks herself there, Lucy is far from a child in need of comfort from nightmares now, she's sixteen after all. Edmunds quiet voice startles from the darkness close by, there is something dark about the wry humour in his voice as he comments on her inability to sleep through Lucy's tears. She steals his candle and slips through to wake her sister, whispering comfort and reassurance as though ten years have not passed. When Lucy has returned to a more contented slumber, Susan returns to the landing and with the candle between them demands the truth.

They talk of the last conversations they each had with Aslan, of the meanings that have slowly formed from those cryptic words from years before. They cease avoiding Lucy's words, and the reason they have both kept them from Peter. It is worse than she feared, Peter had stumbled across a letter from one of Lucy's school friends; taken Aslan's words as a warning and drawn his own conclusions. On things that both she and Edmund had suspected but ignored; that Lucy knows no reason to hide. Peter believes that Lucy has strayed from the path that Aslan set them on and because he believes so does she. Susan is torn between grief at her little sister's heartbreak and broken friendships, and anger at her elder brother's actions.

~

She tries to talk to Peter when he returns from work the following evening, but finds him cold, distant and utterly blindly set on his path. There is no reasoning with him, he believes he can save Lucy and intends to do everything in his power to do so. She watches Peter as he burns the letter in the candle-flame; the way he fails to burn his fingers evidence enough that this is a regular occurrence. Brave new world, she thinks helplessly. They can talk as much as they like of how much she's changed, but she doesn't remotely recognise her brother in the young man standing across the room from her. She feels the anger rising beneath the surface, and wonders if this strange mix of rage and helplessness is how Edmund has been feeling these last few months. When at last Peter speaks again his voice is so calm it almost scares her; ice around his heart and threaded through his words. Brittle with it though.

"What was it that you came to tell us anyway?"

She pulls herself together to reply, shoring up her words with the fire of frustration.

"The touring company is going to America for a few months, a theatre in New York offered us the chance of a run. Wonderful opportunity, will do wonders for my career," she pauses and lets out a tiny bitter laugh, "I'd planned to ask mother if I might take Lucy. She finishes school in a month or so; it'd hardly make much difference. If she wanted to come, of course. I thought, well, it hardly matters now."

She leaves the words to trail into silence and Peter looks up from where he's been staring at the charred remains of the letter to respond quietly. "What did you think, that you could drag her off into that world of frivolity and sin that you spend so much of your life gladly embracing…"

She cuts him off, struggling desperately against her anger.  
"I thought, of how much she loved adventure, of all her letters about her journey on the Dawntreader. That we've babied her so much, we who know how truly brave and strong she is have gone along with mother and father's sheltering her from things she already knows. I thought… I thought it might give her space to grown up on her own terms, make the transition from child to adult in the eyes of others that bit easier. But clearly I was wrong. You are bound and determined to keep her a child forever, to keep your position as King in her heart and mind, no matter how it grieves her."

The hurt on his face is clear, and he looks like the lost young boy he forever is in her heart, so she softens her words.

"You will always be King Peter to us but you have to remember that she was a Queen too, an equal who deserves to be treated as such. Treating her as a child does all of us a disservice, more a disservice to what we were in Narnia. "

She turns towards the door, determined to leave with her dignity in tact, before she cries or screams in rage.

"I was _high_ King," he calls after her.

"And I was once _high_ Queen, yet I would never have taken her with me if you'd thought it a bad idea. I expected the two of us to discuss the matter as equals, not to find you'd already made such dramatic decisions for her path without so much as mentioning the subject to me. That you've ridden roughshod over Edmund and Lucy's protests; he came to you for help because he trusted you and you betrayed that. And now, now I must betray it too, I can no longer rein you in. I am no longer a queen in your eyes, I have no more worth than the average brigand."

He is silent at that, and in equal silence she takes her leave.

~

Edmund's voice is raw as he stands in front of her on the platform, "how can… How could anything Lucy believes, anything she feels be so wrong? Be beyond Aslan's forgiveness."

He looks so lost that she shares with him the bitter comfort that she holds in her own heart. "The Aslan I knew, he would not stand to see her suffer like this. Narnia would not close its doors on her for such a little quirk in the workings of her heart. And if it did, well its not a Narnia I'd want to return to."

"It never goes well for us when we doubt Lucy."

"No it never does."

He hugs her too tightly as the others from her company arrive, sweeping up both her and her suitcase, threatening to take him off with them to Southampton and on to New York. For a moment he looks tempted, before shaking his head and all bravado advises them that he has a young lady's honour to protect.

It breaks her heart watching him standing alone on the platform, and she hopes he's strong enough to believe for both of them.

~

New York is a welcome distraction from home, and she throws herself into that life with aplomb. Her letters home are full of anecdotes from rehearsals, backstage mishaps, parties and cheerful stories about her succession of beaus and occasional fiancés to keep her mother satisfied. She loves her beautiful boys, they call her a diva and she feels like a queen on their arms. One of the other girls calls her out as a beard, and once Susan knows what the term means she wears it with as much pride as the rings that mark her false promises. She protects her boys as best she can, and tries not to think of how she is failing Lucy.

Over a year has passed since she last stood in the hall of her parents' hall, and were Edmund not taller she would think no time at all had passed. Lucy looks like the adult she is now, yet in word and deed she seems younger, as though Peter had succeeded in freezing her in aspic. She could almost believe that Lucy's placid smile is evidence of a truce between her youngest and oldest siblings were it not for the worried glances Edmund throws her way when he thinks no one is watching. She asks Lucy about the issue obliquely and gets an equally oblique response about putting away childish things and Susan's heart breaks a little for her. It frightens her how deeply into denial her siblings have fallen, part of her loves the idea of the Friends of Narnia, the other recoils at the way they use it to hide from reality. She needs something to turn them outwards, to focus them upon the world in which they all have to live now. She does the only thing she can; she renounces Narnia. She calls it a silly game, a relic of childhood, a wartime crutch and dream. It is viscerally painful to hurt them all like this but she does it anyway, trying to show them that they have let Narnia become a game, hidden the people that place had taught them to be. It is a mark of how far they have slid from each other that not even Edmund realises what she was up to. With every misunderstanding she feels a little bit of her belief slip away and no longer has the energy to hold onto any of them.

She returns to New York again, unable to watch the disaster unfolding around her any longer. Edmund does not come to the station to see her off this time, and she makes it all the way across the Atlantic and into the safety of her beloved Manhattan flat before she allows herself the luxury of crying over it.

Two years later she stands in the rain at the graveside and wishes that she could cry. Uncharacteristically her father pulls her into a hug, whispers how it had grieved her mother so that Susan had fallen out with her siblings. How guilty he felt that he could only be glad about it now, as it meant they still had one child when they could so nearly have lost them all. She wishes she could find it in her heart to be grateful for this rare demonstration that her parents loved her outside of cold stiff words. All she can think is that she would give anything to have been with them, to finally know if she or they had been right about Narnia once and for all.

She is certain of but one thing. There is no forgiveness for the daughters of eve, not in this world, nor in that.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jill and Lucy follow their own paths; Susan lives in the world and does what she must.

Aslan's Country is beautiful and the house they reside in equally so. The Pevensies and the Professor speak of it fondly; a reminder of the house they all lived in during the war. She spends as much time as possible exploring the woods beyond the gardens with Eustace and Edmund, riding horses and having small adventures. By unspoken agreement they spend little time in the gardens, and speak little of Edmund's siblings. Sometimes the Professor and Polly join them on their adventures, having discovered the trick of returning, if only physically, to their teenage years. More often those two become young adults and have their own adventures with their own old Narnian friends.

Peter never seems to stray beyond the garden, unless he goes walking with Aslan, which is rare. No one mentions his inactivity or his reluctance to seek out old Narnian acquaintances. Not until the day they return from a days adventure to find Peter and Caspian having a sword fight across the wide hall. At first it seems light-hearted, old friends sparring, enjoy the familiar competition; yet there is an undertone to the verbal sparring that accompanies it. Beyond them, on the second to bottom stair, stands Lucy in silent tears and the truth they've all been hiding from stares them all in the face. Every day she has grown younger; until today she looks all of ten years old.

She's walking in the gardens when she becomes aware of no longer being alone. She half expects her companion to be Aslan, but instead she finds Lucy at her side. Edmund has returned and requested she and Eustace join him; he's located the crew of the _Dawntreader_ and is eager for them to join the adventure. Jill is torn between her desire to join in the adventure once more and longing to find her own path with it's own adventures. It is at times like this she regrets most that Susan is lost to them, however strange it is to miss someone she never met, she would have liked to fight alongside the older girl even if only once. Looking at the youthful form that has become Lucy's habit, Jill struggles to remember how she was in the world. To separate the placid, patient young woman from the 'Friends of Narnia' meetings from the brave and vivacious woman Eustace and Edmund spoke of when they recalled their earlier Narnian adventures. They walk together in silence Lucy, Jill has noticed, never speaks unless she has something to say, so Jill decides to wait her out. They reach the top of the hill beyond the gardens, and pause a moment to take in the view, all the way down to the sea. The docks are too far away to see clearly but there is a large ship at harbour there and it can only be the _Dawntreader_ she has heard so much about. It is then; at last, that Lucy speaks.

"I should like to see it again one day," she begins.

"You could come with us tomorrow," Jill replies, "Peter may be intent on mouldering here in his memories and regrets, but you don't need to stay just because he does."

Lucy shakes her head slowly, "No, my place is here for now. There will be other adventures that I can join you in, but for now I am needed here. Caspian knew my answer before he asked, but his sense of honour required that he asked anyway. He does not understand, but he does accept my answer."

"If I'm entirely honest, neither do I," confesses Jill, forcing the frustration she feels out of her voice, "I don't imagine Edmund or Eustace will either. They'll accept it, don't get me wrong, however much you look like a child, we're well aware that you're an adult quite capable of making your own choices and we'll respect them. Its just…" she struggles for words ineffectively. She kicks the grass in irritation, only to stop when she feels Lucy's hand on her arm, turning her gently. Lucy looks older now than Jill has ever seen her, and she remembers the stories of Queen Lucy the kind she heard long ago.

"You think I wear a child's image because I must. I do not. I wear it because it suits my purpose. It is to the child I once was that Peter owes his apologies, from whom he needs forgiveness." Lucy walks a short way away and stares hard towards the coast. "Through an adult's eyes I could no more forgive him than Edmund can. I would gladly join your adventure and leave him to rot with the guilt he refuses to acknowledge," she pauses a moment to take a deep breath, "but we lost Susan that way and I will not allow that to happen again. One day we'll all be able to forgive her for being right, and then, then we might earn the right to see her once more."

Jill walks over to where Lucy has sunk down into the grass, eyes still fixed stubbornly upon the horizon. Sinking down beside her Jill asks the only question that comes to mind. "But I thought that Susan had stopped believing in Narnia, she called it a silly game, surely she was wrong? We know she was wrong. We're here after all."

Lucy shakes her head jerkily and the gesture looks more childlike than anything she has done while wearing her younger self's image. "She never lost faith in Narnia, not really. She lost faith in us. Peter drove her away and Edmund and I…we never did enough to stop that. I think renouncing Narnia was the only way she could think of to show us how much we'd hurt each other, how far we'd fallen from grace." She looks straight at Jill for the first time in their conversation, and there are years of grief and regret written into her features, "Susan is not the one who needs forgiveness. We are the ones who need her forgiveness."

"There is then, forgiveness for us daughters of Eve after all?"

"Only when there has been a transgression. Aslan doesn't judge us for who or how we love, only when we abuse that love."

They sit in silence together for a long time, Jill silently wishing that she had Lucy's certainty about own her place in this world. That she could trust in Aslan's wisdom with such innocence and assurance. Eventually the sun begins to set and a chill breeze reaches them from the sea. As Jill helps Lucy to her feet for the return home, Lucy suddenly grins at her mischievously.

"Besides, you're not going off on a boy's own adventure with Edmund and Eustace. You're going on an entirely different adventure and you know it."  
Jill protests that she has no idea what Lucy's talking about, before eventually admitting that she has other dreams she wants to chase, but doesn't know how. Lucy recommends speaking with Aunt Polly, she and the Professor had visited other world's before they had reached Narnia long ago.

That evening at dinner she talks for hours with Polly of the Wood Between the Worlds, the pools and the worlds the contained, and most of all about the rings that took them there and back again. She catches Lucy's eyes a few times during the evening, they share a smile and Jill resolutely does not think about the stolen kiss she shared with a beautiful woman in the gathering dusk scarce hours before.

~

Jill stands on the docks and watches the preparations for departure. Caspian approaches them looking cheerful and hopeful.

"You convinced the girls to come?" he calls out to Edmund standing a little way away.

"No, its just Eustace and I, the girls, well Lucy said she had her own battle to fight and Jill…"

"Is only coming part of the way," she finishes for him as she comes up to join them.

"She has her own path to follow," comments Eustace, sadness and pride mixed in his voice. She shares his sadness; it still feels strange to be on an adventure without him, so she hugs him a little tighter than she might normally. Goodbyes said; the boys climb aboard the ship leaving her on the dock with Caspian. She finds herself fiddling nervously with the rings that Polly gave her, uncomfortable under the weight of his stare. Yet when he speaks he sounds as awkward as she feels, and she finds herself warming to him.

"My people were once pirates and came to Narnia by accident, through a hole between the worlds. There was always sanctuary for the lost in Narnia. Perhaps on the journey our paths shall cross again, there will always be room in the crew for you. And perhaps you shall not be alone then."

"Perhaps," she replies with a smile. "They tell me the last great adventure is the longest."

He leans down and places a soft kiss to her cheek and whispers "For your companion on the journey." He walks away then without a backward glance and she takes a little of his certainty to her heart as she slides one of the rings onto her finger and closes her eyes.

~

It's 1953 before Susan returns to England again. Setting foot in London for the first time since the funeral nearly breaks her and she holds her new husband's arm tightly all the way to their new house. She juggles her job, her mother's accusing grief and a London that is both home and not. It's almost a relief to find herself pregnant, with bed rest giving her time to write the play she's been nursing these last few years, to have time to think about and then have long discussions with her Robert about how their arrangement will work in practice. Beyond companionship and children there are compromises to be made, but he keeps his promises and always introduces his friends to her; never taking a lover she dislikes. She nurses her daughter in the dark of the empty stalls, as Robert directs the rehearsals of the play she wrote and can't bring herself to regret a thing.

The wind is sharp against her cheeks as she stands in the middle of the alley. The sky above is grey and threatening, putting the empty taunts of the three boys standing not ten foot away to shame. All bravado, she feels the overwhelming desire to teach them how it feels to truly fear, to have someone hold their lives in the palm of their hand. The boy crumpled at her feet is spitting blood and only pride is keeping him from scrabbling for his now-broken glasses. She can hear her daughter sobbing from where she stands by the wall, its 1965 and her daughter is eleven years old and still too young to understand the words they throw at her friend between punches. The stones in her hands feel smooth, sharp and right. They fly from her hands like arrows from the bow, straight and true, landing where they will hurt but not harm. The boys flee like the cowards they are, her own mocking words chasing after them on the wind. She feels strong and free, as the wind whips her hair free of its bun. The pair of them stare at her in awe and she feels like a queen again. They walk home arm in arm, planning Sunday afternoon archery practice in their huge ramshackle garden.

Less than ten years later she will spend her Sunday afternoons helping them paint posters and sew together rainbow flags to fly above their heads as they march through London. It will take her months to convince her husband to join her in another with old friends of their own, months more to be in sight of their daughter and her friends. They never seem to find a way to explain their own secret to their daughter until it's really far too late for explanations. Her husband has a heart attack a week shy of his sixtieth birthday; she sits by his bedside and watches him fade away. The specialist takes her to one side and talks in circles about anomalies in his blood work, and the need for tests on her too. Somewhere under all the euphemisms she divines the truth, yet even under the shadow of a once distant threat, she finds herself laughing aloud at the young man in front of her. So delicately picking around the truth, as though, she accuses him between peals of laughter that are closer than she'd like to tears, after thirty years of marriage she hadn't noticed she was married to a homosexual.

She finds herself an accidental survivor of yet another tragedy, blood strangely free of infection.

It's a quiet day in June, the weather soft and calm, garden glorious and untamed around her. These are the days she likes best, though they are the days she misses the companionship of her marriage the most. Her daughter is coming over later; bringing her small son Tom, all rosy cheeks and innocence that reminds Susan painfully of Lucy at the same age. Bittersweet pleasures are hers these days she thinks, but she's content in her lot. She does wish however that this headache that has clung all day would clear, perhaps a nap in the grass would go her good.

She doesn't hear the smothered giggles of Tom as he sneaks up on her, or his unhappy shouts to his mother when she doesn't respond to his hug. Though her eyes are half open she doesn't see her daughter's horrified expression as she swings Tom up and carts him off next door. Or hear the soft pronouncements of blood clots to the brain made by the retired doctor neighbour who returns with her daughter. She's further away from them now than she ever thought to go again.

~

The grass is soft beneath her when she wakes. Opening her eyes she can see a canopy of trees above her. Sitting up her bones feel less sore and her joints less stiff than they have been for many a year. There is a young girl sitting again one of the trees with her eyes closed, so Susan addresses the first of her many questions to her.

"Where am I?"

"The Wood Between the Worlds," younger girl comments as though it's the most normal thing in the world.

"I think I'm dead." Susan comments mildly taken aback by her own calmness at the prospect.

"That's usually how it works," comes the sage reply from the tree, followed by a laugh as she continues, "having said that I could be wrong, I'm not entirely sure that I'm dead, never mind anyone else. I've never met anyone else here when I've stopped off between journeys before and I'm fairly certain you don't have to be dead to visit here."

She stops and leans forward before continuing, "you're Susan Penvensie aren't you?"

Susan's about to contradict her, to give her married name when it strikes her that she isn't anymore. She doesn't have to be anything she was in the world.

"I was," she settles on, "Jill Pole wasn't it? Eustace's school friend." Susan remembers her aunt burbling away about Eustace's best friend from school. About how they were both too busy with school for boyfriends or girlfriends but would clearly one day wake up to the fact the were inseparable and perfect for each other. She can recall perfectly Eustace's pained expression and the tangled euphemistic conversation out of earshot of both their mothers, as she'd attempted to explain that she knew exactly what he meant about them 'protecting each other' and that their secret was safe with her.

"Once upon a time…" Jill counters.

The pool at Jill's feet is dark and still, while the others shine with life. Jill tells her of a final battle, a proper old school good versus evil of mythic proportions. She speaks of gods, monsters, redemption and the end of the world. Narnia is lost. Susan can truly never return there, however, Jill assures her that the door to Aslan's Country is open to her.

Jill's road still lies long in front of her, perhaps one day it will lead her back there, but for now there are dozens of worlds to explore, dreams to chase, and beautiful woman to play champion for and have her heart broken by. Susan thinks of Edmund and Eustace, on an endless voyage across the seas with Caspian and Reepicheep, of Peter and Lucy caught in their eternal chess game, of Aslan forever patient and keeping watch. She would dearly like to see them all again, but perhaps they can wait a little longer. Among the trees she finds her bow and quiver and her horn hangs upon the broken stub of a tree branch. So armed she offers her free hand to Jill and together they move carefully between the pools debating which one will bring the best adventures, before picking one at random and jumping in without a backward glance.

Perhaps there will be forgiveness when they return, perhaps there will not, either way they do not crave it, they have a different kind of peace. There are miles to go before they sleep, but they wouldn't wish it any other way.

_And I believe in Love  
And I know that you do too  
And I believe in some kind of path  
That we can walk down, me and you_  
\- Into My Arms – Nick Cave &amp; The Bad Seeds


End file.
